Water Pipeline STEM Challenge (Engineering Design Activity)

lesson overview

Design a water tower and pipeline to transport water to your city! This is a great summer STEM activity for outdoors!

Activity Overview: Your city needs your help! The city’s water tower is broken, and they need your team to quickly design a water tower and pipeline that will provide water to two important buildings: the hospital and the school. 

Real-world STEM Connection:

• Science behind how water towers work

• Examples of unusual water towers

• Career Connection: Hydrologist and Water Engineer

As with many STEM activities, this challenge can be tailored to students of various skill levels and abilities.

Included in this product:

• Detailed teachers guide with links to resources

• Photos and videos of student examples

• Student handouts to guide them through the design process

• Videos to motivate and support learning

• Editable Google Slides STEM journal for distance learning

• STEM Career Connections and real-world examples

• Science handouts

• Student recording sheet for each step of the process

Suggested Materials: Many different materials can be used for this challenge. Here are some suggestions that worked well for our students.

• plastic cups (avoid paper cups)

• cardboard

• cardstock

• modeling clay

• large straws (smoothie size)

• bendy straws

• popsicle sticks

• paper clips

• tape, scissors, ruler

• water

• towel for spills

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Looking for more STEM lessons? Find the Vivify resource guide here: bit.ly/VivifyResourceGuide

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